


The Way You Did

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:03:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8069062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: After not seeing each other for several years, Chris and Zach run into each other in a bar.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts).



> This is for the lovely RC on her birthday. She asked for suffering, and that is what I have given her! xD Ilu, bb. Hope you enjoy!!

The moment is like something that would happen in a poem. A sea of faceless people parts, sickly yellow light illuminates the bar and the man who sits there. A riptide of nostalgia drags Chris under. Memories buffet him in waves. He knows those shoulders, those legs, and the way they hook around a bar stool. He knows the backs of those hands, the back of that neck, and that distinctive profile.

Chris shakes his head, clearing it of purple prose, and moves forward as if dragged by an invisible hook.

“You come here often?” he says to the back of Zach’s head. He desperately, _desperately_ wishes he had something wittier to say, something Zach could remember after they inevitably pass out of each other’s lives again, but maybe this is better. Maybe trite and forgettable should be the goal.

Zach’s shoulders tense for a second, and then he turns toward Chris as if in slow motion. He looks just the same, Chris thinks. He must be dyeing his hair—though the light does seem to pick up a hint of gray just at his temples. There are a few extra lines at the corners of his mouth and between his brows, but otherwise he hasn’t changed a bit. Crisp, creased black slacks. Wine-colored button-down with the sleeves rolled to expose those perfectly-furred forearms. His eyes glow like amber when he looks up and smiles.

“Not anymore,” Zach says. Yep, that’s his line all right. They might as well be reading from a script. The next part is predictable too: “Well, well. Christopher Pine. It’s been a while.”

“Eight years,” Chris says. _Eight years, four months, twenty-one days._

“Since the last—”

“Press tour ended, yep. You in town for—”

“Patrick’s thing? Yeah.”

“Good. That’s good.” Chris rocks back on his heels and wishes he wasn’t holding an empty glass. He’s already had three drinks though, and his blood is buzzing enough that he probably shouldn’t have another. Especially not now.

But then Zach motions to the empty stool next to him and says, “Let me buy you another,” and what’s a guy to do? You can’t turn down good manners like that.

They wait until the bartender has set down another round—gin and tonic for Zach and a double whiskey for Chris—before they speak again. Zach’s half-turns toward him and leans one forearm on the bar and cocks his head to the side like he’s trying to figure him out. Or deciding what question to ask first. God knows there are plenty of things to ask about.

“So you’ve fallen off the wagon, huh?” is what he settles on. 

Chris feels his face flush. Of course Zach would have heard about that. “Turns out AA wasn’t for me,” he says. “I’m not good at cold turkey.” _Eight years, four months, twenty-one days_ , he thinks. He didn’t have a choice but to go cold turkey on that one. So he traded one addiction for another. “Nice of you to ask _after_ buying me a drink though.”

Zach shrugs, unconcerned. “Is it still a problem?”

“I don’t add anything but sugar to my morning coffee these days, so that’s something. It’s nice that we’re jumping right back into the deep end here, by the way.”

“Hey, I figure we might as well skip the awkward small talk.” Zach grins, and there’s something feral in it, something that makes Chris’s blood sing.

He grins right back, just as sharply. “In that case, how’s the single life treating you?” 

Zach takes the blow without flinching. It’s probably not the first time he’s fielded this question—probably not even the first time today if he’s seen any of their other old friends yet. “I was living the single life long before I got divorced, so it’s no big change, to tell you the truth. Is this the part where you say ‘I told you so’?”

“No,” Chris says, lifting his glass. “This is the part where I say congratulations.”

They stare each other down for a moment, and then Zach clinks his glass cautiously against Chris’s and they both take a long drink. 

“Your cynicism would suggest there’s no one special in your life right now?” Zach asks after he sets his glass back down on the bar. He stares hard at Chris, like he expects him to lie. And honestly Chris _would_ lie if he thought he could get away with it, but something tells him that even after all this time Zach would be able to sniff out the real truth.

So he goes for shocking instead. “No one since you.”

Zach barks out a laugh at that. “Since me? Oh, Chris.” The tone of his voice raises Chris’s hackles, making him tighten his fingers on his glass. “A handful of clandestine hotel-room fucks do not a relationship make.”

“A handful?” Chris growls. A stupid quibble, but honestly, _fuck you, Zach_.

“Fine, a few dozen. It’s the ‘clandestine’ part that’s important.”

“Hmm, yeah, good point. I forgot it only counts as a real relationship if the whole fucking world knows about it.”

Zach rolls his eyes. “I just think _someone_ has to know about it. I mean, fuck, _I_ wasn’t even in on the secret.”

“Jesus Christ.” Chris drags a hand down his face, then picks up his glass and drains it. He actually considers ordering another, but the searching look Zach gives him squelches that urge PDQ. Obviously Zach already has plenty of reasons to look down on him. “You know, Zach, you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you,” Zach says. Then, he drums his fingertips on the bar and raises his eyebrows. “Should we get out of here?” 

And of all the things Chris expected Zach to say next, that...was not one of them. Too many drinks aside, Chris’s mouth is suddenly bone dry.

“And go where?”

“We’re at a hotel bar, Christopher. Word on the street is that hotels have these things called rooms—”

“You smug son of a—”

“—and I actually have one upstairs, if you want to—”

Chris is already fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and drawing out a wad of bills. “I know you said you wanted to buy, but I figure with the alimony you’re paying to your ex-boy toy…”

“Fuck you,” Zach spits even as he slides off his own bar stool. “It’s called a pre-nup, jackass. Learn it before you let one of those airheads you date locks you down.”

Zach makes to walk away, get the dramatic exit even though he’s already invited Chris to follow after him, but no way is Chris letting him get away with that. He reaches out and snags Zach by the arm, then shifts his grip to that crease-free shirt and clutches it tight, jerking him close, ensuring there sure as hell will be some creases in it after this is all over.

“ _You_ were the original airhead, you know,” he says against Zach’s mouth. He waits until he feels Zach’s lips curve into a grin before he steps away, letting go of his shirt so Zach can try in vain to smooth it back out. People might be looking at them, but Chris doesn’t give a shit. If it’s the clandestine part that Zach had beef with, well, he won’t be able to make that complaint tonight at least.

Chris gestures toward the lobby as if he’s impatient, as if he didn’t just impede their progress. “Lead the way, Quinto.” 

It’s fun, watching Zach try to be imperious when really he’s just following orders, back on script after all.

The elevator ride passes in stony silence, and the walk down the long, overbright hall isn’t much better. It isn’t until they’re stopped at Zach’s door that Zach casually slips a hand into Chris’s back pocket and squeezes, leaning in to mouth at his neck as he reaches past him to slip his card key in the lock.

“What were you doing here tonight, by the way?” he says in Chris’s ear as they shuffle inside. 

“Met a couple of the guys for a drink,” Chris says. He twists out of Zach’s grip and backs into the room, watching him carefully, keeping distance between them for now. “And then they had to go, and I kept drinking.”

They went back to their girlfriends, their wives—children in some cases. All good reasons to leave the bar early. All things Chris doesn’t have. Tonight he has Zach though, and despite the bitterness still purling in his chest, he figures Zach is as good a reason to have left the bar as any other. 

“You better not be too drunk for this.” Zach’s voice is low, viscous, hot in all the ways Chris remembers it. He slinks forward, but Chris keeps moving back, debating whether to put a hand up to stop Zach or if that’d just look like a challenge.

“Too drunk for what, exactly?” he asks. Absently, he reaches up and thumbs at the top button of his own shirt, grins a little when the movement draws Zach’s eyes. “What were you thinking would happen here?”

“Well I didn’t invite you up to my room for a poetry reading, Christopher.”

“Sure. You just thought ‘eight years, oh well, I bet he’ll fall right back into bed with me.’”

Zach’s eyes narrow, and his tongue darts over his bottom lip. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Yes, that much he can’t argue with. And he wants Zach so badly he can taste it, taste him, the memory of him thick on his tongue. It makes him angry, how it can come back to him so quickly, a feeling he’s been trying to shake for what feels like half his life. Desire so intense it burns him up inside, stings like bile in the back of his throat. He’s going to give in, he knows it, but he wants it to be on his own terms. So Zach can’t go back to New York laughing at him, the guy who waited for him, pathetic, the drunk who fell right into his bed, who begged him to fuck him. No, no. Zach can be the one to beg, if he wants it so damn badly.

“What did you want to happen, Zach?” he asks, and plucks open the top button of his shirt, and the next one too. He’s never been so glad that he’s kept up with himself. In three years he’ll be fifty, but he doesn’t look it, and he knows it. Zach doesn’t look it either. Thank fuck for Hollywood, for good doctors and good trainers and—if Chris had to guess—a little plastic surgery on Zach’s part. A facelift, maybe a tummy tuck, but Chris will have to check on that last count. He’ll have to look for the scar himself. If he’s not too distracted to remember by then.

Zach stares at him, chest heaving, for several silent beats. It’s strange that he’s not forthcoming with the incisive quip, something as cutting as it is arousing. The fight seems to be going out of his eyes, in fact. Either he’s too busy watching Chris’s slow but steady strip-tease, or he hasn’t thought this far ahead after all. Maybe he isn’t like Chris. Maybe he hasn’t imagined this a hundred times—the unplanned meeting, the spur-of-the-moment tryst. 

“I miss you.” 

Zach chokes it out like it hurts him. His fingers flex against the outside of his thighs, and his eyes have gone dark—dark and pleading. 

“I’ve missed you,” he repeats.

Chris is out of his shirt by then. He tosses it down on the floor, and he’s moving before he can stop himself, reaching for Zach’s face and dragging him in so he can fit their mouths together, the way they’re meant to be. Zach’s tongue tracing his bottom lip and they groan together, passing the sound back and forth from palate to palate. Zach’s fingers dig into his jaw, and he’s got his hand around Zach’s neck, contemplating whether he should leave bruises or whether it matters anymore or whether he cares. Then contemplating nothing at all, because that’s Zach’s throat moving against his palm and Zach’s tongue sliding against his and this wasn’t supposed to happen, wasn’t ever supposed to happen again.

“Fuck,” Zach says, ripping their mouths apart and laying their temples against each other so he can run his hands down Chris’s back. “God, you’re just the same.”

They’re not the same though, neither of them are. Zach is softer when Chris runs his hands over his chest, and when they crash down onto the bed together, the noise Zach makes is more a sob than a growl. The look in his eyes is different too—needy and greedy—and Chris has a feeling his own eyes are reflecting back those same emotions. He hasn’t felt this much in years. Even with alcohol dulling his senses, every nerve ending in his body is shouting, begging, yearning for something only Zach can give him.

Chris has missed this too, and he knows that it shows.

“Touch me,” Zach begs when both of them are stripped bare, skin against skin, their limbs in a tangle Chris isn’t sure he knows how to navigate anymore. It’s been awhile since he’s been with anyone, male or female. It’s hard when you’re vices are numerous and your patience is next to zero, when just the thought of getting up and going out and trying to pick someone up makes him exhausted. 

“Touch you how?” he asks. 

Zach looks up at him, eyes flashing with annoyance. He grabs Chris’s hand and pulls it down between his legs, wraps Chris’s fingers around his cock and thrusts up, ignoring how dry it is, how their skin drags against each other. 

“Always loved your hands,” Zach says, as if Chris doesn’t already know that. As if he needs a reminder. “God, always. Come on. Don’t stop.”

So that’s what this is, Chris thinks, looking down at Zach’s face. His head is thrown back against the pillow, his features dark with desire. There is something vacant in his expression, something that suggests he’s trying to go backward in time. And Chris has no problem with that. They can both go back, he thinks. They can go back together.

He leans in and nips at Zach’s earlobe, using his teeth to get his attention. Zach gasps and his back bows, and Chris assumes that means he’s listening. “Will you fuck me?” he asks. It’s been a long time. In fact, Zach might be the last one who had the honor. And really, that might have been by design. It’s hard, Chris thinks, to let anyone that close, to trust them that much. He knows Zach won’t hurt him—at least not anymore than he already has. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe it’s hard to be afraid of someone who’s already messed you up as much as a person can.

In response, Zach surges upward and knocks Chris flat on the mattress, catches both of his wrists and pins them over his head and attacks his mouth like a starved man. Chris tries to give as good as he gets, bucking upward in encouragement and nipping at Zach’s lips and moaning like a dying man. He spreads his legs so Zach can get between them. He squirms and wriggles until Zach gives up and releases him and he can dig his fingers into Zach’s ass.

“Can I take that as a yes?” Chris asks breathlessly, barely able to convey amusement when he’s almost too turned on to function.

“I’ll fuck you into next week, Christopher,” Zach hisses into his ear. “I’ll fuck you until you beg me to stop.”

“Never,” Chris says. “I’d never want you to stop.”

Zach seems intent on testing that theory though. He disappears for a moment and comes back with slick fingers, pushes in relentlessly with two at once and makes Chris howl in equal parts anguish and satisfaction. The pain is good. The pain might last, even if this doesn’t. He might feel it tomorrow, and remember this happened, even if Zach disappears into the ether like he was never here at all. 

“You’re so fucking tight,” Zach groans, crooking his fingers just right. “Just like the first time.”

The first time with Zach was the first time ever and Chris remembers it like it was yesterday. He was stone-cold sober then, wide-eyed and innocent and so taken in by these deep dark eyes and the pointy grin and the carefully constructed persona. Now he knows better, knows that Zach isn’t as hard on the inside as he seems on the outside. There are insecurities in there, and fears too. Just enough to make him prickly, rough in all the places Chris is too soft. They always fit together that way. Filling in each other’s weak spots. Stronger together. Brighter together. Why did it end? It’s hard to remember when Zach is taking him apart from the inside out.

“Please,” Chris begs, forgetting to be coy. “Please, Zach. Need you.”

Zach doesn’t keep him waiting, which is always clue number one that he needs this as much as Chris does. He withdraws his fingers, and it isn’t long before he’s nudging up against Chris’s hole with something bigger and better, making Chris writhe in anticipation until Zach has to grip his hips to still him. 

“Chris,” Zach says, his voice oddly serious. Chris opens his eyes and looks at him, and he finds Zach staring back intently. “Chris,” he says again, and lifts his fingers to Chris’s face. “Oh, Chris.”

When Zach pushes into him, the world splits in half. Eight years, four months, twenty-one days—all leading to this moment. All the pain brought them here, all the loneliness brought them here. Chris shuts his eyes, searches back to the last time they were together like this, and thinks they should have known even then. They should have known that this was the best they could hope for and that living without it would cause nothing but pain. Divorce on Zach’s part. Liquor on Chris’s. Why couldn’t they just—why couldn’t they—

“Chris.” Zach smooths back his hair and rests their foreheads together, stilling now that he’s all the way inside, their hips and thighs flush, tacky with sweat. 

“Zach,” Chris sighs. It feels so good to say his name. He knows why Zach is repeating his now. It feels like his mouth was made to form the word, like it’s more comfortable with that one syllable than any other sound in the English language. 

“Can—” Zach cuts himself off, rolling their foreheads together and squeezing his eyes shut. Chris holds his breath and watches him and waits. It doesn’t take long for him to get it out. “Can you forgive me?”

 _No_ , Chris thinks. It’s reflex, but it’s also the truth. No, he can’t forgive Zach the years they lost—years they _wasted_. No, this one night isn’t good enough to do it. For all he knows, Zach will be up and gone in the morning, back to the opposite coast and working to put Chris out of his mind for eight more years, until the next time mutual friends force them to be in the same place at the same time. No, this physical apology isn’t good enough, and Chris doesn’t know what _would_ be good enough, but he has a feeling it’s more than Zach has to give. 

He can’t say that though. He won’t. Instead, he reaches up and buries his fingers in Zach’s hair, threads his fingers through those thick, dark strands and holds on tight, pulls until Zach’s eyes grow wet. Better that both of them are misty-eyed for this.

“Yes,” he sighs, and brings their mouths together. “Yes, I forgive you.”

 _Now fuck me,_ he thinks. _And let me forget for now._ And Zach, for all the good it’ll do, obliges.


End file.
